Perth Voice Interactive

OVERSEAS trips at ratepayers’ expense will be banned if Bayswater councillor Brent Fleeton gets his way.

Fresh from convincing colleagues late last year to slash clothing expenses the new councillor — elected in October — now has council-funded trips in his sights.

In the two years to July 2015, former councillor Mike Anderton and Cr Barry McKenna made three trips between them — each costing between $3500 and $5700 — to Auckland to attend accounting and engineering conferences.

“The annual jaunt to New Zealand, which some of my colleagues have enjoyed for years, should be a thing of the past,” Cr Fleeton says. “With pensioners under increasing cost of living pressures, rates continuing to rise above acceptable levels, are we really going to keep saying every year that funding council and staff junkets is a priority? I wouldn’t have thought so.”

Cr McKenna, who is now mayor, did not answer the Voice’s calls before the paper’s deadline.

Budget cut

Cr Fleeton, a Liberal party staffer, also wants to limit trips within Australia. He says staff should only be allowed on “one-off” trips across the country.

He wants the mayor’s $15,000 annual travel budget cut to $10,000 and councillors’ budgets slashed from $7500 to $1500.

Bayswater residents’ association president Tony Green says video can replace a lot of travel: “Time to move with the times, Bayswater, and to cut out all the unnecessary costs in local government,” he says.

But council spokeswoman Julia Kogan suggests the council may not be ready to embrace virtual attendance.

“Human interaction is diminished and the technology is not suited for entire conferences where break-out sessions and elective workshops are the norm and group dynamics important,” she says.

“The value of this networking should not be underrated, as it provides elected members with an opportunity to keep a ‘finger on the pulse of the industry’ and consider innovative solutions to service delivery.”

by EMMIE DOWLING